Lin Piao Anti-Party Clique: Sworn Enemy Of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

AS far back as more than 120 years ago, the great revolutionary teacher Marx pointed out: "The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat" Throughout the entire historical period of the transition from capitalism to communism after the proletariat's seizure of political power, the struggle between Marxism and revisionism always focuses on whether to recognize the existence of classes, class contradictions and class struggle and whether to persist in the dictatorship of the proletariat. The attitude towards the dictatorship of the proletariat is a touchstone for distinguishing revolutionaries from counter-revolutionaries and genuine revolutionaries from sham revolutionaries. Lenin said: "Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." Because of its criminal intention to restore capitalism in China, the Lin Piao anti-Party clique maliciously attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat, launched a counter-revolutionary armed coup d'etat and conspired to subvert it. All this fully exposed Lin Piao and his gang as out-and-out renegades to Marxism and inveterate enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Advertising the Theory of "the Dying Out Of Class Struggle"

The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes the quintessence of Marxism. Therefore, without exception, all enemies of Marxism, from Bernstein and Kautsky to Khrushchov and Brezhnev as well as Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao, concentrated their attacks on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In a bid to restore capitalism in China, Lin Piao and his gang worked overtime to trumpet the theory of "the dying out of class struggle'' so as to negate class struggle and liquidate the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began, he ranted that "socialism has triumphed over capitalism in all respects" in China. While the Flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution kindled by Chairman Mao raged, Lin Piao, fearing the revolution might develop in depth, again showed up gibbering that this revolution had "made a clean sweep" of the century-old influences of capitalism and several-thousand-year-old influences of feudalism and that the class enemies had been "completely wiped out." Putting up a false front by speaking highly of the great historic significance of the Great Cultural Revolution, Lin Piao and his followers actually spread the reactionary fallacy of "the dying out of class struggle" in a futile attempt to disarm the proletariat and revolutionary people ideologically. This was their vicious intention! History tells us that the founding of New China and the basic completion of the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production are great victories won by the Chinese proletariat and other revolutionary people, but these did not mean final victory. The defeated class will continue to struggle. These people are still around and this class still exists. They are bound to leap out for a test of strength with the proletariat. More often than not, class enemies at home team up with reactionary forces abroad in mounting attacks and counter-attacks. The political movements and major inner-Party two-line struggles, which have taken place since the founding of the People's Republic of China, are the best proofs of this. Even the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which was carried out on an unprecedented scale has not made and cannot make "a clean sweep" of all exploiting class ideas and all monsters and demons. As a matter of fact, it was precisely at the time when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had won great victories and when the Ninth Party Congress had successfully concluded that Lin Piao and Co., the agents of the landlord and capitalist classes hidden in our Party, hastily came out into the open and launched wild attacks against the Party in a planned and organized way and with a programme. While throwing themselves into the arms of imperialism, particularly Soviet revisionist social-imperialism, they recruited renegades and traitors at home and surreptitiously drew up a programme for a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat in a vain effort to subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat, reinstate the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes and restore capitalism. The emergence of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique to continue the test of strength with the proletariat after the downfall of the Liu Shao-chi renegade clique is a clear manifestation of the fierce class struggles at home and internationally. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat and the replacement of capitalism by socialism are big leaps in the history of the development of human society. But as socialism emerges from capitalism and is only a historical stage in the transition from capitalism to communism, and not a communist society which is completely developed economically and in other aspects, it inevitably carries with it the traditional forces and bad influences left over from capitalist society. Speaking of the socialist society, Marx said: "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." In socialist society, there still exist differences between workers and peasants, between town and countryside and between manual and mental labour, and bourgeois right has not yet been completely done away with. After studying the law of the development of socialist society from the viewpoint of materialist dialectics, our great leader Chairman Mao pointed out: The universal law governing nature and human society — the unity and struggle of contradictions — is also applicable to the socialist society. Socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. Throughout this period, there are classes, class contradictions and class struggle, there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the danger of capitalist restoration and there is the threat of subversion and aggression by imperialism and social-imperialism. Classes, class contradictions and class struggle exist objectively and are independent of man's will. To prevent a capitalist restoration and to build socialism and ultimately realize communism, it is necessary to carry the socialist revolution on the political, economic, ideological and cultural fronts through to the end. The experience of the international workers’ movement and the objective law of class struggle show there is no other way to carry the socialist revolution to the end except through the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Marx put it, "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the slate can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." Historical experience gained since the founding of the People's Republic of China more than two decades ago also has proved that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental guarantee for consolidating and developing socialism and for the proletariat to defeat the bourgeoisie. By advertising the theory of "the dying out of class struggle," Lin Piao and his gang aimed at changing our Party's basic line and policies for the entire historical period of socialism and negating and liquidating the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was nothing but a shameless betrayal of the proletarian revolution.

Vilifying the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

In its programme for a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat entitled "Outline of Project '571,'" the Lin Piao anti-Party clique look the stand of the landlord and capitalist classes and venomously attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat as "totalitarian," "autocratic" and "dictatorial" and slandered the socialist system in our country as "undemocratic." It clamoured for the overthrow of this system and the establishment of a so-called "truly socialist'' state it had long yearned for. All of this clique's counter-revolutionary outcries were easily refuted by Marxist theories on the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxism holds that the state is the product of irreconcilable class antagonisms and a tool for the oppression of one class by another. All the capitalist states, however varied and complicated their forms, arc in essence tools for protecting the interests of the bourgeoisie and suppressing the proletariat and other labouring people. On the contrary, a state under the dictatorship of the proletariat serves to protect its own proletariat and other working people and exercises revolutionary dictatorship over the bourgeoisie. This is why the state, as a political power, always means one section of the people practising "totalitarianism," "autocracy'" and "dictatorship" over the other section, thereby suppressing the resistance of the antagonistic classes. The question lies in whether it is the bourgeoisie that exercises "autocracy" over the proletariat (in capitalist countries), or the proletariat that exercises "autocracy" over the bourgeoisie (in socialist countries). It has to be one or the other. Ours is a socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat where the proletariat and other revolutionary people wield state power and exercise "dictatorship" and "autocracy" over the landlord and capitalist classes. This is a matter of course! According to the Marxist theory of the state, democracy and equality have a class nature. If there is democracy for the bourgeoisie, then democracy for the proletariat is out of the question. If there is democracy for the proletariat, there is no democracy for the bourgeoisie. There is no such thing as democracy which transcends classes. The great teacher Lenin pointed out: "Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism." Practising democracy among the people and suppressing by force the reactionaries who are not allowed to enjoy democratic life are two indispensable and interrelated aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only by exercising dictatorship over those who exploit and oppress the people can democracy for the labouring people be developed and expanded to an unprecedented extent. In the absence of dictatorship over the class enemies, there will be no real democracy for the working people. By vilifying the dictatorship exercised by the masses of the people, who make up more than 95 per cent of China's population, over the handful of class enemies as "autocratic" and "dictatorial," the Lin Piao anti-Party clique actually took up the cudgels for the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and Rightists who had been put under our dictatorship. While raising a hue and cry about reinstating the landlord and capitalist classes which had been overthrown by the Chinese people through long years of arduous struggle and "liberating them politically without exception." they nefariously called for a “concentrated attack" and "harsh suppression” against the proletariat and other revolutionary people. All this shows that what Lin Piao and his men did not want was "'autocracy" and "dictatorship'' exercised by the proletariat: i; did not mean that they would give up "autocracy" and “dictatorship." The so-called "truly socialist" stale the Lin Piao anti-Party clique wanted to establish was nothing but one in which the landlord and comprador-capitalist classes in power would exercise dictatorship over the labouring people. In other words, it was a Hitler-type "socialism" or social-fascism like that of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the protective talisman for a victorious people; it is like food and clothing which they can never do without. The more vehemently Lin Piao and his followers attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat, the more evident it was that this was the insurmountable obstacle in their attempt to usurp power and restore capitalism and that we were right to put the dictatorship of the proletariat into practice. In the days ahead, we should make continuous efforts so as "greatly to consolidate our revolutionary dictatorship so that we can carry the revolution through to the end and achieve the objective of building a great socialist state."

Conspiring to Subvert the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat

The great leader of the Chinese people Chairman Mao has taught us: "The aim of every revolutionary struggle in the world is the seizure and consolidation of political power. Similarly, the sole aim of counterrevolution in desperately struggling against the revolutionary forces is the preservation of its political power." Because of their reactionary landlord and bourgeois world outlook. Lin Piao and the followers of his anti-Party clique, who began with spreading the theory of "the dying out of class struggle" and negating and attacking the dictatorship of the proletariat, inevitably went further and launched a counter-revolutionary armed coup d'etat and plotted to subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country. Lin Piao, this bourgeois careerist and conspirator who tried in vain to usurp Party leadership and seize state power, did all he could to advertise the reactionary conception of history and describe the history of thousands of years of class struggle as one of "palace" coups by a handful of people in the upper social strata fighting for power and killing one another. He denied that the people are the motive force in the making of world history. He drew into his service a pack of renegades, enemy agents, alien-class elements, degenerates and Rightists, drew up the programme for a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat and launched a counter-revolutionary armed coup d'etat in a wild attempt to assassinate Chairman Mao and set up a rival central committee. The criminal aim of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique was to usurp the supreme power of the Party and the state, completely betray the line of the Ninth Party Congress, completely change the Party's basic line and policies for the entire historical period of socialism, turn the Marxist-Leninist Chinese Communist Party into a revisionist, fascist party, subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism. Inside China, it wanted to reinstate the landlord and capitalist classes, which our Party, army and people had overthrown with their own hands under the leadership of Chairman Mao and to institute a feudal-comprador-fascist dictatorship. Internationally, it wanted to capitulate to Soviet revisionist social-imperialism and ally themselves with imperialism, revisionism and reaction to oppose China, communism and revolution. However, in the face of our socialist system which is more consolidated than ever and our proletarian dictatorship which is so powerful today. Lin Piao and his sworn followers, overreaching themselves and coming out to have a trial of strength with the proletariat, could only end up in ignominious self-destruction. This was the due punishment given them by history. Marx and Engels solemnly proclaimed in Manifesto of the Communist Party: "Its [the bourgeoisie's] fall and the victory of the proletariat arc equally inevitable." Trying hard to turn back the clock, Lin Piao and his gang conspired to turn a socialist country back to capitalism. This perverse action went against the development of human history and was doomed to failure. History has proved and will continue to prove that the proletariat is bound to defeat the bourgeoisie because it is the most revolutionary class which stands for the development of the advanced productive forces and is a new-born force embodying the direction in which history advances. Capitalism has become a decadent and moribund social system hampering the development of the productive forces. When society develops to such a stage as is the case today, the task of transforming the world historically falls on the shoulders of the proletariat and its political party. That the proletariat overthrows the bourgeoisie and socialism replaces capitalism is an objective law independent of man's will. "Only socialism can save China," as Chairman Mao has said. It was only after decades of hard struggle by the Chinese people that our socialist country under the dictatorship of the proletariat was born at the cost of the blood shed by countless revolutionary martyrs.

The proletariat and other revolutionary people of our country will defend it with their lives! They will never forget their untold sufferings in the dark old society. Moreover, they have clearly seen how in today's Soviet Union a handful of counter-revolutionary revisionists who usurped the Party and state leadership have turned the homeland of the October Revolution into a social-imperialist country. The attempt of Lin Piao and his followers to lead our country away from the socialist road and reduce it to a colony of Soviet revisionism was something that could never be tolerated. Chairman Mao has pointed out: "Opportunists who want 10 stem the tide are to be found almost everywhere, but the tide can never be stemmed. Socialism is everywhere advancing triumphantly, leaving all obstructions behind." With blind faith in personal power, Lin Piao and his gang resorted to machinations in a vain attempt to subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat. But far from changing the course of history, they ended up in being put on trial by history. This is a victory of the Marxist materialist conception of history over their idealist conception of history!